Niv Hadar: "My Goal is to Prove to the Audience That There Are No Real Magic Tricks in the World"

You can meet Niv Hadar performing on stages all across the country and the world, where he can light bulbs with his hands, bend spoons without touching them, guess the name of the guy sitting in the audience, swallow fire, and even float in the air.

But no, if you thought Niv Hadar is a magician or a telepathy artist like those known from such shows, you're wrong, because quite the contrary – he fights against all those people who present themselves as having superhuman powers. "My purpose is to prove to the audience that there are no magic tricks in the world, no supernatural powers, and no experts who can read minds or control us through our senses. These powers are only with Hashem," he explains.

Niv Hadar

According to him, it's particularly interesting to see that the field is especially prevalent among Jews. "According to research, 90% of the world's magic inventors are Jewish," he shares, "and who are the ones who believe these nonsense the most? The Jews. They flock more than anyone to such shows. The only explanation I have for this is that Jews always desire something supernatural to happen, they also always strive for spirituality, and therefore, if it doesn't come to them naturally and correctly, they seek it in other ways, and believe me, Jews are the easiest to convince and deceive in the realm of magic and supernatural powers precisely because of their strong faith."

I Didn't Want People to Believe in Nonsense

Niv's journey into this special field is fascinating. "As a child, I grew up in the Beit Vagan neighborhood in Jerusalem near the Shalom Hotel, and during the summer vacation, I would visit the hotel almost daily with my friends. The hotel became our second home. Among other things, we watched various artists coming to the hotel and also attended shows. We particularly loved the telepathy and magic shows. We would see them almost every evening, and slowly, over time, after watching each show dozens of times, I began to discover and understand how those artists perform their tricks, and I also started doing magic tricks and playing around with it.

"In my youth," he continues, "I studied in yeshivas and never thought of going into this field because it seemed childish to me, and I also disdained it because I knew there was no truth behind these powers." However, the turning point came after his marriage. "We lived in Gush Katif, and I remember one day I met an elderly woman from the settlement walking and crying nonstop. I approached her to ask how I could help, and she told me she visited someone who presented himself as having powers (she called him a 'kabbalist') who told her she needed to do terrible things. She was so upset about it and was unable to function.

"Coincidentally, I knew the 'kabbalist' she was talking about," Niv continues, "and I knew you couldn't even call him a 'kabbalist' because a kabbalist is someone who has received something, and he hadn't received anything, not to mention that he didn't even have basic Torah knowledge, he was a charlatan. On the other hand, when I tried to explain to her that there was no truth to the things he said, she started claiming that he knew how to tell her all sorts of details and things about herself that he couldn't have known unless through divine spirit.

'You know what?' I caught myself responding to her, 'I can also tell you such stories,' I opened my mouth and started telling her stories no less successful and surprising than those the 'kabbalist' told, which also turned out to be true. Afterward, I also explained to her how I do it and clarified to her that indeed nobody in the world has special powers. I saw visibly how relieved she became, and from then on, I started to understand that I had a real mission in this area."

Unveiling the Subconscious

Indeed, Niv Hadar performs on stages all over the country, where he presents amazing magic and telepathy shows, yet immediately after, he reveals almost all the secrets behind them, proving there is genuinely no real power behind them.

But why is it so important for you to prove this? Why do you care if people believe it?

To answer this, he recounts: "A few years ago, I received an angry letter from a woman who had attended my shows. She wrote that in her opinion, all my activities weren't blessed, and instead of dealing with these nonsense, I should spread Torah and use my skills to spread Judaism.

"My response to the letter was ready: that same week we read the parsha 'Mishpatim,' where the topic of wars between Israel and their enemies is raised, noting that it is due to all the abominations of sorcerers, magicians, and more, that Hashem does not drive out the nations before us. That understanding personally shook me because no one fails to ask themselves in today's difficult security situation, how can we truly solve the problem with the enemies? People are unaware of the simplest thing—that Hashem wants us to believe in Him and not in magicians and sorcerers. Belief in them is actual idolatry because idolatry is not just bowing to an idol, it is any belief in a foreign power."

But essentially, when you prove things, you're yourself performing exactly the actions that magicians do. Aren't you worried that there will be those in the audience who will enjoy the amazing magic instead of receiving the important messages?

"This question is valid, and I'll reinforce it: according to the words of the Rambam (Maimonides), making magic, sleight of hand, and agility in movement is a prohibition from the Torah and falls under the commandment 'do not divine' (which means fooling others), but my rabbis instructed me that this is the best way to expose this ailment because it's evident that if I approach people and deliver a full lecture on the subject, I'll never manage to achieve a real outcome, but the moment they see and feel it visually, it will impact them much more."

And there's also another reason, he explains: "For people to know what they need to guard against, they need to experience it. A mother can never educate her child to cross the street carefully without explaining to him what a car is. Of course, I'm required to walk a very tightrope, and when I perform in front of children, I make sure to expose all the magic tricks, each and every one, so that even by mistake, no child leaves with wrong conclusions. In all my shows, I also emphasize that people who need to leave in the middle, before the show ends, it's better they don't attend at all because the goal is not to watch magic tricks but to leave with conclusions."

An End to Charlatanism

And if you thought that Niv focuses solely on magic and telepathy shows, which we all might see only once every few years, he wants to stress that his goal is much broader. "Not everyone is aware," he points out, "but many times these foreign powers take over our lives in various ways, and this is a very great danger that must be warned against."

What do you mean?

"I'll give an example: there are various famous people in the public who define themselves as having special powers, who regularly prophesy that the State of Israel is going to suffer an earthquake, or a tsunami wave is going to occur, or the Arabs are going to destroy us, and more. Occasionally, their predictions come true, because statistically, they have to be right sometimes, and therefore people believe them, but it's clear that these are nothing but baseless nonsense. The Rambam tells us that the punishment for a false prophet is stoning, and how do we know if he is a false prophet? If he erred in his prophecy. According to the Rambam and all the sages of Israel, if the Sanhedrin existed today, they would take those people who see themselves as soothsayers and actually stone them."

In conclusion, Niv wishes to reveal to us a big secret: "There is a magic trick that many magicians present to the audience: they choose a participant who is asked to stand in front of everyone with a blindfold. Then they show how they manage to bring their hands close to different parts of his body and even without touching him, the participant knows where they approached and points to those exact areas. Thus, the impression is created as if the magician has special energy in his hands, and through it transfers the sensations.

"Of course, there's no truth here," he continues, "and the secret is very simple—the thin, transparent thread that even I as a magician have difficulty seeing is used, and with the thread, you can tickle the participant. To the audience, it seems as if nothing is touching him, but there's a thread, and that's the whole secret."

And Niv continues and reveals something amazing: "The one responsible for inventing this thread is an Israeli Jew who now lives abroad. Most of his livelihood comes from marketing these magic threads. One day I met him and asked him: 'Tell me, how many magicians are there in the world that you manage to market this thread so much? How is it possible that there are so many sales?'"

The answer, as Niv notes, surprised even him. "Most of my clients are not magicians at all," the manufacturer answered, "rather they are alternative therapists who use the threads to give their clients the feeling that they are touching them without actually touching and transferring energy to them." "That's how it is," concludes Niv, "even from those alternative methods, one must be cautious and stay away because in the vast majority of cases they are completely false, no less than magic."